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Learners Without Borders
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Learners Without Borders
New Learning Pathways for All Students



September 2021 | 160 pages | Corwin

The future of education centers empowered students in a global learning ecosystem.

Despite decades of reform, the traditional borders of education—graduation, curriculum, classrooms, schools—have failed to deliver on the goals of excellence and equity.

Despite massive societal changes, education remains controlled by an old mindset. It is time to change that limiting mindset and, more importantly, the ineffective practices in education. To truly serve all learners, future classrooms must remove the boundaries of learning and become student-centered, culturally responsive, and personalized—supportive and equitable environments where each student can direct their own learning and seek multiple pathways to skills and knowledge in a global learning ecosystem. This compelling call for transformative change offers all involved in education

  • Evidence-based arguments that reveal the need to break the traditional borders that limit learning
  • Strategies to personalize learning and remove the confinement of traditional pathways
  • Examples from around the world to create equitable and student-centric learning environments
  • Resources for creating a school learning environment that expands opportunities for personalized learning into the global learning ecosystem
It is time to now imagine a different kind of learning, without borders, and to begin the shifts in practice that will result in personalized learning for all students.
 
About the Author
 
Chapter 1. New Possibilities
The Failure of Educational Reforms

 
Our Changing World

 
Hope for the Future

 
 
Chapter 2. The School Pathway
The Borders of Schooling

 
The Dysfunctional One-to-Many Model

 
Summary

 
 
Chapter 3. New Learning Opportunities
The Impact of Technology

 
What Matters: The Pressure on Education

 
New Students and Their Interactions With Technology

 
How to Improve: The Opportunities

 
Summary

 
 
Chapter 4. Changing the School Pathway
The School Pathway

 
Rethinking the School Pathway

 
Breaking Out of the School Pathway

 
Dropping Out of the School Pathway

 
Changing the School Pathway

 
New Personalized Pathways

 
Summary

 
 
Chapter 5. Breaking the Curriculum Border
Futile Efforts

 
The Owners of Curriculum

 
The Missing Actor

 
Students as Co-Owners

 
Summary

 
 
Chapter 6. Breaking the Classroom Border
The Classroom Is Not the Only Place for Learning

 
The Human Teacher

 
New Forms of Teaching and Learning

 
Technology and Teachers’ Roles

 
Summary

 
 
Chapter 7. Self-Directed Learners
Natural-Born Learners

 
Diverse Learners

 
Self-Determined Learners

 
The Loss of Learning

 
Teaching Self-Determination

 
Cultivating Future Creators

 
Advocacy

 
Summary

 
 
Chapter 8. Making the Change: Learners Without Borders
Advocating for the Right Outcomes

 
Making the Changes

 
Learners Without Borders

 
Conclusion: Can Change Happen?

 
 
References
 
Index

Yong Zhao, one of our most consistently profound leaders in the transformation of education, breaks the rigid mold of traditional schools, replacing it with a global ecosystem of student-engaged learning. In this future, which is already here, students, teachers, and a community of resources are liberated from those molds, and we are inspired to re-create school as unbounded learning environments.

Grant Lichtman
Educator, Chief Provocateur, Author, Thrive, Poway, CA

This book presents some very provocative notions on why we need significant changes in today’s schools. The remote learning environments that have been implemented as a result of COVID have taught us some very real lessons and this book begins to put them in the perspective of individualized and personalized learning for students at all levels.

Marianne Lescher
Principal, Kyrene Traditional Academy, Gilbert, AZ

Learners Without Borders is a thought-provoking look at the opportunity before us. For decades, schools have remained relatively unchanged, though overnight change was forced upon us by a global pandemic. Zhao urges us to consider this upheaval as a gateway to fundamentally redesign schools, break the “default view” and disrupt education as we knew it.

Melissa J. Weatherwax
K–12 Instructional Technology, Averill Park Central School District

Professor Zhao consistently pushes us to dream big about what’s possible in teaching and learning. Anyone who wants a pulse on the future of our rapidly changing world needs a copy of this book!

Julie Stern
Learning Facilitator Author, Learning That Transfers, Visible Learning for Social Studies, and Tools for Teaching Conceptual Understanding

Long before COVID, a second virus began spreading around the world, infecting school systems and rendering them resistant to change. Its costs to students, families, and societies have likewise been enormous. In Learners Without Borders, Dr. Yong Zhao delivers the much-awaited vaccine. Its active ingredients include treating students as owners of their own learning and helping them harness technology for education, work, and life. As educators and policymakers plan for a post-COVID world, this book is their best vaccination against the pandemic of educational mediocrity.

Milton Chen
Executive Director, Emeritus, George Lucas Educational Foundation

For instructors

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ISBN: 9781506377353
£30.99

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